A phrase that really gets to me, for instance, would be one of those neoconservative references to Vietnam as a national tragedy, but only because we lost. That thought fills me with ire. To begin with, the person who says it is typically untouched by tragedy; like me, he has not lost a son or a job. In addition, the implication is that if we had won, the war would have been somehow less tragic. People with that mentality, I have to admit, impress me as being the scum of the earth.
That is Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 (ht)
Catch-22 is now fifty years old. I have read a few essays in this context. The best one of them all is this one by Ron Rosenbaum.
In a way, it was a coincidence that those essays came up as I was wrapping up reading and blogging about A farewell to arms.
"War is not won by victory. ... We think. We read. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates this war."
"There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war."
"Also they make money out of it."
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